The Effects Of Training For Abacus Mental Calculation On Children's Self-regulation Ability

Self-regulation is one of the most important domains in child development. The development of self-regulation is the sign of psychological development maturity. The formation of good self-regulation plays a promotion role in children psychological development. In recent years, there are more and more researches on children self-regulation ability. In this study, self-regulation is that individual regulates their own mental and behavioral processes initiatively based on specific social background and environment request in order to achieve a goal. Children's self-regulation involves some related psychological mechanism. There are effortful control, executive function and behavioral regulation and there is intersection among these processes.Recently, there are lots of research methods about children self-regulation ability. This study divide self-regulation into four related psychological process, through analyzing the research methods of children self-regulation ability at home and abroad. There are the regulation of cognitive process, emotional process, behavioral process and need process.Many researches pay attention to the effects of the development of self-regulation in childhood on children psychological development later. The development of self-regulation in childhood plays an important role in children behavioral problems, social competence and academic ability. Therefore, the importance of children self-regulation can not be ignored.Abacus mental calculation, has been promoted widely since the rise, is a method of mathematics teaching. Abacus mental calculation could use"psychological abacus"in their minds to carry out calculation rapidly and accurately. The training for abacus mental calculation can promote children attention, memory, thinking and intelligence. Childhood is the key period of the training for abacus mental calculation, and is the vital period of the development of children self-regulation. There is similar psychological mechanism between abacus mental calculation and self-regulation. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of training for abacus mental calculation on children's self-regulation ability.There two researches in this study. Research One is the preparation of children self-regulation ability test from 3 to 6. This research selects six test tasks (Grass-Snow Task, Digit Backward Task, White-Black Task, Visual Pictures Memory, Butterfly-Frog, Today-Tomorrow Task) through reference to previous research and results. The subjects are 148 3-6 year-olds children. The results show that:(1) The difficulty and discrimination of 3-6 year-olds children self-regulation ability test are acceptable. The difficulty of the test is 0.58, and the discrimination is 0.32.(2)The reliability of 3-6 year-olds children self-regulation ability test is also acceptable. The consistency reliability of the test is 0.92, and the test-retest reliability is 0.64 which is significant at the 0.01 level.(3)The scores distribution of 3-6 year-olds children self-regulation ability test is normal.(4)Age difference is significant in 3-6 year-olds children self-regulation ability. Children self-regulation ability enhances increasingly with age.Research Two is the effects of training for abacus mental calculation on 4-5 year-olds children's self-regulation ability. The subjects are 70 4-5 year-olds children. The subjects are divided into abacus group and non-abacus group, abacus group are divided by abacus hours. All the subjects participate in children self-regulation ability test. The results show that:(1)The subjects of 4 year-olds abacus hours (non-abacus group, learning abacus mental calculation 18 hours group, learning abacus mental calculation 69 hours group ) are not significant in children self-regulation ability. However, the subjects of 4 year-olds abacus hours are close to significant in Grass-Snow Task.. Non abacus group and learning abacus mental calculation 69 hours group are significant on the scores of Grass-Snow Task. Other scores of the tasks are not significant.(2) The subjects of 5 year-olds abacus hours (non-abacus group, learning abacus mental calculation 18 or 69 hours group, learning abacus mental calculation 396 hours group ) are close to significant in children self-regulation ability. Learning abacus mental calculation 18 or 69 hours group and learning abacus mental calculation 396 hours group are close to significant on the scores of children self-regulation test. Simultaneously, abacus hours are significant in Digit Backward Task. Learning abacus mental calculation 18 or 69 hours group and learning abacus mental calculation 396 hours group are significant on the scores of Digit Backward Task. Other scores of the tasks are not significant.